VIA PT880 chipset

[Zap]

Anyone have a retail board in their possession yet? Reviews are difficult to find on actual retailing boards. Newegg has the Abit VT7 for a budget $65. Seeing how Anandtech verified the chipset has a functional PCI lock (and assuming AGP lock as well) this board looks to be a nice budget contender to the Intel 865/875 chipsets. I like the passive Northbridge cooling and the AGP slot being located one notch below normal (farther away from RAM slots) is welcome news for my new Leadtek Winfast A350 video card whose rear heatsink interferes with RAM clips on most boards (can't even install in my Epox 8RDA boards). Abit's website states that it uses Softmenu, so overclocking should be possible.

I kinda want to know before I buy, but if nobody else knows then I'll end up being the guinea pig. I have a P4 setup that I'm looking for a replacement board. I have an Asus P4S800 motherboard that doesn't overclock well (no PCI lock) and I just broke the plastic heatsink retension clip on accident. I got a refurb Abit BH7 from Newegg, but it was really screwed up. The P4 2.53 CPU I had overclocked like a champ on this board, but it had many, many other issues once Windows XP was installed (even at unoverclocked settings).

Anyone have experience with PT880 chipsets and overclocking? Any links to reviews? Thanks.

 

[Vette73]

VIA has been on the ball in the last couple chipsets they have come out with. And the 8237 southbridge is very nice also. I juts got a Athlon64 and went with the VIA chipset OVER the Nivida chipset as I think it is much better. And if you are looking for a cheap P4 chipset the VIA one looks to fit the bill, and Abit is know for makeing some great boards. I say go for it, esp. at that price.

 

[Zap]

Well, reviews are trickling in on retail-level boards. I read two Soltek reviews and one MSI. On Newegg I still see just the Abit. The Soltek is quite full featured while the Abit just has the normal stuff. Hmmm, all the reviews seem to point to around 215-220 FSB as max for the chipset. I guess with a "C" or "E" chip the Intel 865/875 are still king for FSB. However, the chip I'm gonna be putting in this board will be a 2.53. I'm thinking the lower FSB will overclock fine since it doesn't get anywhere near the chipset limit and the PCI bus (and hopefully AGP) is supposed to be locked.

Unless I hear some horrible things about this chipset, I'll probably go with the Abit board in a few weeks. I'm gonna be out of town quite a bit in the next few weeks and I'd rather not order something only to have it sit around, so I'll probably order the board the third week of March when I'm guaranteed some quality time to mess with stuff. Sometime after I get my board, if reviews are still scarce I'll post one here.

 

[shock311]

Hey, I purchased the ABIT VT7 about 2 weeks ago and I'm having problems running Corsair pc3200 cas2 ram in it at 200mhz so and it wont run in dual channel. Just to let you know, you may want to go MSI.

 

[o1die]

Anandtech or thg did one review of a via p4 chipset, and it didn't overclock well. You can get a replacement p4 heatsink bracket for about $5 at Fry's or other online venders. If money is an issue, check out newegg's refurbished section. They had an abit is7 for about $50 shipped without accessories. The vi7 with via chipset was about $40 shipped. For overclocking, abit or asus are the best choices with the 865 or 875 chipset.

 

[Zap]

Thanks, o1die. Yeah, I read the chipset reviews. Remember I'm looking for a budget way to overclock a 533 FSB chip. The VIA chipset may top out at 220-230MHz FSB while comparible Intel chipsets go to 250+ FSB, but that doesn't matter if I don't have an 800MHz FSB chip.

I got a replacement P4 heatsink bracket from Nexfan.com, tagged onto an order I was already placing to take advantage of their fixed rate shipping. Cost $2.99, no tax. One thing about it, it has a nice and sturdy metal "X" bracket that goes behind the motherboard for the plastic to screw into, and presumably also to keep the motherboard from flexing too much. I found that it shorted out the back of the motherboard. My solution was to use tin snips and cut the corners off the "X" so that the plastic could still screw on, but nothing was shorting out the board.

Yes, I'm aware of Newegg's refurb section. I've bought many motherboards from there. About half has had problems, ranging from just plain DOA to various stuff not working. The most recent refurb board I returned was an Abit BH7. It would POST fine and WinXP would install fine, but Windows was unable to detect the video card and various PCI cards - as in they just didn't show up on Device Manager. I'm kinda a bit leery of buying certain refurb stuff at Newegg these days. I never have good luck with motherboards or barebones, and I have horrible luck with refurb Geil RAM (but not with other brands). Video cards are mostly okay, and hard drives have so far been all perfect.

I could afford another Intel chipset board if I wanted to - already have an Abit IS7 with a P4 2.6C, but I'm just wondering about the VIA chipset.

I may end up getting the MSI board. Cheaper right now. Strange, the Abit board was $64.99, then $69.99, then $68.99 all with free shipping. The MSI board was $62.99 free shipping, then $60.99 with $5 shipping. Keeps changing every week. The MSI board comes with more "stuff" like SATA cables and power adaptors. I'm a bit concerned with vcore since some reviewers stated a 1.6V max, or something like that. Nobody's reviewed the Abit board so I don't know what voltage options are available.

Speaking of "nobody..." Nobody's reviewed any current chipset motherboards with older CPUs. Makes it tough for my purchasing decision and makes all of the reviews of lesser value to me. Sure, nice to know that the terminal FSB is lower on VIA chipset boards than equivalent Intel chipset boards, but I want to know how it does with an older chip. Can it overclock as well since terminal FSB is no longer an issue? Does having a lower FSB change the available memory multipliers? These things I want to know, but no reviewer has told me.

 

[Zap]

Alrighty, I purchased a PT880 chipset board and just got Windows installed on it. I've decided to start another thread on my experiences.

REVIEW: MSI PT880 Neo-LSR, good board but voltage limited